Movie Review: Alien Abduction (2014)

Updated on June 3, 2014

I have always been a huge fan of alien films, regardless of the encounter. Films such as Fire in the Sky, Signs, Alien and Close Encounter of the Third Kind have set the standards of what we perceive aliens to be and act like. Yet in my opinion the single greatest alien abduction film is the highly underrated the Fourth Kind. It wasn’t so much the aliens but the story and the concept of the plot that made that movie so great. It brought about an almost hopeless feeling of dread by the time the credits rolled. So when I first heard about Alien abduction I was thrilled because it looked to be right up there with the rest. Unfortunately the film falls short but not for a lack of effort.

The film follows a family having a night out camping. The only problem is that they are camping in Brown Mountain, NC which is an infamous UFO hotspot. Waking up late at night Corey (Corey Eid) and Jillian (Jillian Clare) see and record those infamous lights, the Brown Mountain Lights. The next day the two show the video to their parents Peter (Peter Holden) and Katie (Katherine Sigismund) which think nothing of it. On their way home Peter follows his GPS instructions which he has done countless time only this time it gets him and his family lost. It doesn’t take long for them to realize that something far more sinister then lights is going on around them.

The one thing that set this apart from most other found footage movie is the fact that it has a logical reason for existing although the actual finding of the footage is completely illogical. The films events are recorded by Riley (Riley Polanski) who is autistic and interacts better with his surroundings by recording everything. This gives the film a logical reason for continuing even after things get bad and when most would put down the camera and run.

Another thing going for it is that things start up fairly quickly. There isn’t no walking and talking pointlessly for the first half hour or so like so many other found footage movies. It only takes about fifteen minutes for thing to get started and once they start they don’t stop. This is a good and bad thing. The reason it’s good is, well you don’t have to wait around forever for something to pop up. The reason it’s bad is because there is no character development.

They come from above.

All of the characters are flat as can be. No one sticks out other than Sean (Jeff Bowser) who is meet later on in the film and is a local of the hill. He’s not on the screen for very long but he’s the only character that had any depth to him. This doesn’t hinder the film very much because it’s only 85 minutes long.

Alien Abduction is a great indie film that’s worth watching if you are a fan of alien abduction movies. It doesn’t reinvent the genre but that’s not what it set out to do. It’s a simple short enjoyable horror film that’s meant as a straight forward abduction movie nothing more, nothing less, 3 out of 5.